Arne Sorenson

Marriott's Family Guy | washingtonpost.com

Eleven years ago, Arne Sorenson received a mysterious phone call from Bill Marriott. It was a Saturday morning. Could he come over to the house? Sorenson was a rising young executive at Marriott International, but the situation was perplexing. "We had just bought a house on the Eastern Shore," Sorenson said the other day. "My wife said, 'I hope he's not going to fire you.' " Sorenson was not dismissed. Marriott asked him to become chief financial officer. The Bethesda hotel chain's longtime chief executive clearly remembers Sorenson's reaction. "Arne was pretty quiet," he said. Explaining his silence, Sorenson said, "It never crossed my mind before, either that I would expect to become chief financial officer or that he would offer me the position."